“On A Mission” showcases leaders who are going the extra mile each and every day. Each of the people we interview is on a mission to serve, inspire and educate. Our hosts highlight their impact and explore what motivates, engages and fulfills individuals and teams to be more productive, more effective, better at what they do, and happier to do it. Today our host Morgan Allen spoke with Jonathan Howard.
Jonathan Howard
CEO/Director at OtterSpace Wildlife
Website Address: otterspacewildlife.com
Short company description:
Wildlife sanctuary and care facility
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned over your career?
Gut instincts are often right
What nonprofit do you have a heart for and how do you support it?
OtterSpace Wildlife
What’s your favorite way to get involved in the community?
Providing knowledge and lectures on wildlife
If you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be?
The work with animals and being a dad
Transcript
Morgan Allen
Welcome back to another episode of On A Mission, where we highlight those who are on a mission to make an impact. I’m Morgan Allen, joined today by Jonathan Howard with OtterSpace Wildlife. You brought me an otter. Thank you for being here.
Jonathan Howard
Very welcome.
Morgan Allen
He’s so cute. He’s got his little space suit on. So tell me about what you do with OtterSpace Wildlife.
Jonathan Howard
OtterSpace Wildlife started as a wildlife sanctuary for permanently impaired imprinting handicapped animals, basically. I did wildlife rehabilitation for years. Still dabble in it some. And what we found was early on that facilities would not take these injured impaired animals that have something wrong with them. And you only had three choices. Ford. That set them free.
Find a facility that would accept them or euthanize them. Sadly, most facilities and zoos, they won’t accept deer. They don’t accept raccoons. They’re not cool. They’re not. You know something that is beneficial to them. They’ll take an otter or a bobcat or something. So a friend of mine and I, we established a corporation, founded the Ark Wildlife Care and Sanctuary, which we rebranded two years ago to Otter Space.
Just because it’s really cool, it’s very unique. And another one didn’t exist. And there are hundreds of arks everywhere. And we’ve really become the land of misfit toys. You go to a big zoo or a big exhibit, you don’t see healthy animals, you don’t see handicapped animals, you don’t see animals with special needs. That’s where we come in.
We are that place they go. We have a deer that was born without eyes. We have raccoons that were caught in traps or, you know, had something happen that they’ve lost a leg. We have, you know, all kind of handicapped animals and special needs animals. And every one of them is absolutely amazing. And, you know, when you work with them and you see their stories and hear their stories, and it’s just it’s an incredible experience.
Morgan Allen
I’m sure your heart just grows from spending time with these animals. So you have, we said 250 animals or so in Hilliard?
Jonathan Howard
Yeah. We have approximately 250 right now. We took part of a fur farm rescue a couple of years ago, and I believe we probably have more folks on site than anybody else in the country. We’re at 124, I believe, as of today. Oh my goodness, three new babies. We weren’t expecting. So we have some, you know, little bitty fox baby foxes. Oh, fun. And that’s been a huge undertaking.
Yeah, I can imagine so you’re saving these foxes because they’re going to be turned into a scarf, and so you don’t want them turned into a scarf. You said, come stay on my land and I will take care of you. All these foxes.
Morgan Allen
And you said we were talking off set. So you were telling me about all these colors. Tell me about this.
Jonathan Howard
So these fox came out of a fur farm in Minnesota. The rescue was really originally started by a sable Fox Corporation. And initially she reached out. There were five over 500 Fox there. She reached out, said, you know, can facilities accept them? So we said, yes, we’ll take five families.
They’re beautiful animals. They’re raised in a wire cage, probably 4 to 5ft wide, maybe ten feet long, off the ground. They put two animals together to breed, to get whatever color they make. And those animals spend their life in that cage breeding, making babies to be sold for their fur.
So when she got this, we agreed. We took the five families. It’s amazing to see, when they came out, they’re walking on the ground. They’ve never touched the dirt. They’ve been on wire and their feet, you know, they’re like cats with tape on their feet, touching the dirt.
And then to see them run for the first, a lot of them couldn’t run because they had never been able to run. So they’re all stowed up almost like robots. And, you know, in 2 or 3 weeks, they’re fleet footed and ready to go.
But we then ended up taking 40 more, I believe. And then the director of Save a Fox, lost her life about five months ago, I guess, and we took the remainder. They had no no one had homes for them.
So we have every color imaginable. They are genetically a red fox, but we have black ones, blue ones, brown ones, yellow ones, white ones. I’ll buy the ones. I mean, everything you can imagine. If it’s a color, we probably have it.
Morgan Allen
Wow. And so as a regular person, we can go to your sanctuary and see all these beautiful foxes. We can see the otters and watch them play. You have emus? I’ve seen your emus.
Jonathan Howard
We have emus. We also have a fishing cat, which is an endangered species. And I believe there’s only 51 in the country. Wow. He was retired out of a breeding program due to health issues. We have some chemicals that were retired, our breeding programs.
And a lot of. We’re working now with the lady down in Central Florida, and she’s like, she has a huge heart. So when these animals are in breeding programs, once they reach maturity, most places don’t want them because they’re an older animal. They have a they’re not friendly, they haven’t been handled or anything.
And we’ve kind of got an agreement with her. Now we’ll take what we can on those. So we have some career goals. We have an ambassador serval that came. He was an animal ambassador with the lady. We have the fishing cat. We have bobcats.
I mean, we never know why we ended up recently with a wolf. We were totally not expecting a wolf. And, you know, one day we have a wolf.
Morgan Allen
Yeah, yeah. And then you just learn how to. Yeah, yeah, handle and manage that. That’s wild.
So you host certain events at the property coming up. You have a birthday party for a skunk.
Jonathan Howard
You know, Cosmo, he’ll be one year old. We have it on our website. We’re gonna throw a birthday party where people can come up. They can interact with them. We have several ambassador animals. They can interact with him.
We have possums. We have a nutria. Who is, believe it or not, one of our best ambassadors. He giggles. He loves to be tickled.
Morgan Allen
That’s, What’s a nutria?
Jonathan Howard
It looks like a giant water rat. You’ll see them down in proceedings. Places like that. Around on the water. High. Since they actually came out of South America, there are prohibited species.
We got our first one several years ago, and we weren’t allowed as a rehab. Or we had to euthanize them, and I wouldn’t do it. And so we jumped through the hoops. We met the requirements to get the prohibited permitting for him at all.
And now we’re permitted for and we’re one of the only facilities that have him. And he’s ended up being one of our funnest, most amazing animals.
Morgan Allen
Wow. That’s funny. Well, cool. And can people bring their families and bring their kids to come take pictures with your animals?
Jonathan Howard
Yes, yes, we have, the front of our facility is all open to the public. Our fees are listed on our website. Children three and under are free, 4-12 are $10, and parents are $20, adults.
Yeah. And, you know, it takes an hour to two hours, depending on the weather and how many questions they ask and everything. And you get to see the animals. You’ll also get to interact with a few animals.
We have some muntjac deer, which are called vampire deer. They’re little tiny deer that are about that tall, full grown.
Morgan Allen
No way. Yeah. Very cool. Those are awesome. Well, I can’t wait to get back out there and see it again. I’ve been before, and it was beautiful to see everything that you’ve done there and all the happy animals that live there.
It’s great. So, if people want to come visit Hilliard, Florida, but they can also go to OtterSpaceWildlife.com.
Jonathan Howard
Perfect. And we’re on Facebook also. So you can find us on any of those and you can reach out to either me or our head zookeeper Amanda. Get Ahold of us. We can schedule private events, birthday parties or whatever.
Morgan Allen
Yeah. Wedding?
Jonathan Howard
Yes, we are actually. Believe it or not, I have a lady in Waycross who her and her husband came down, and they would like to do their wedding there this summer. I told them absolutely. If you have only ten grand.
Yeah, I, I yeah, we’ve had several people ask that are hunters because we have deer. They’ll come up and you know they’re like on you love on you and all. And they’re like, you know, can we get married up here and in camouflage with your deer? And they want a country camouflage hunting wedding.
Yeah. Where else are you going to get an eight point buck, stand there and lick you? Oh my gosh, it’s perfect.
Morgan Allen
Yeah. Jonathan, thank you for coming on the show.
Jonathan Howard
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having us.
Morgan Allen
Of course. And viewers, thank you for tuning in to another episode. If you want more head on over to DailyNewsNetwork.com and we have it right there. We’ll see you in the next episode of On A Mission.
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